


i finally understand

by sapphicsongbird



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Alcohol, Drinking, Dubious Consent, F/M, Morning After, Pining, Pre-S1, S1, Tim Loves Sasha So Much, Tim and Sasha's Ill Advised Hookup!, Vaginal Sex, Yearning, as a treat, hangovers, hook-ups, pillowtalk, porn with a little plot
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-04 20:54:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25092703
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sapphicsongbird/pseuds/sapphicsongbird
Summary: when she goes home with Tim, Sasha doesn't expect to realize just how much she cares about him. inspired by "i finally understand" by charli xcx.
Relationships: Sasha James/Tim Stoker
Comments: 2
Kudos: 47





	i finally understand

_ The walls are all gone, did we melt them down? _

_ Liquid in my hands, liquid in my mouth _

_ Footage on my phone, did it with your tongue _

_ And now we’re sticking close, and I understand _

_ Baby, I love you bad _

_ Lately, I finally understand _

_ That maybe, this feeling that I’ve found _

_ Might kill me, put me in the ground _

She knows before she even opens her eyes where she is, and swallows the hot wave of nausea that rises in her throat from last night’s bottle of red wine. She can hear Martin lecturing her about tannins, and when she almost laughs, the sick feeling swells over her again and she rolls onto her side, groaning. The hand that was draped lazily across her side falls to the sheets, and Tim stirs, half-awake. 

“Wha…?”

_ Fuck, _ Sasha thinks. She reaches to rub her eyes and mascara residue flakes onto the heel of her hand. She must look a mess; she doesn’t want him to see her like this, hair stuck to the back of her neck with sweat, face flushed. She’s embarrassed, in the cold light of Sunday morning, to be naked here, and pulls the quilt from Tim’s bed up over her torso despite the heat. She thinks it’s sweet, in spite of herself, this blanket his grandmother stitched, that he ferried from college dorm to dingy bachelor flat on the outskirts of London to slightly-less-dingy but equally-bachelor flat only a few blocks from the Institute. 

She shivers, and knows his gaze is on the back of her neck. His fingers play up her thigh and settle on the dip of her waist. She hoists herself around to face him, and he’s already smirking. God, it’s unfair of him to look so good on less than three hours’ sleep after a night of drunken, ill-advised sex: slightly-too-long black curls tangled just so, the circles under his eyes sexy in a sort of angsty way, the glint across his brown irises a shock to her exhausted system. He smirks, and she can’t tear her gaze from his mouth. 

“Morning, sleepyhead.” 

She expects a Tim-trademarked tongue-in-cheek retort, but he only presses his mouth to the curve of her neck, making her tip her hips towards him just slightly. “Hi,” he whispers. If she’d woken with the intent of getting out of there as quickly as possible, she completely abandons those lofty ambitions at the sweet warmth of his barely-open lips. 

“Some night,” she murmurs, and he chuckles softly, a low sound from deep in his throat that makes her breath catch silently. “I feel shit.” 

“Bit sore, love?” That’s the Tim she knows, She elbows him, and he laughs out loud this time. 

“Hungover, more like?” Though the previous evening is a blur, the ache between her thighs suggests vigor, but she’d rather die than let Tim know that. 

“I’ve got the evidence,” he says, and she starts. 

“I’m sorry, the what?” 

He puts his hands up. “Hey, you asked.”

“I did not!”

He rolls his eyes. “God, Sash, if I’d known you were that wrecked I might not have asked you home at all. Look.” He grabs his phone from where he’s left it on the bedside table and opens the camera roll. She almost doesn’t want to look, but when she hears the wet sounds from the video, she has too. At the sight of her mouth around Tim’s head, filmed from above, she covers her face, which is red-hot with embarrassment. 

“Jesus! Tim!”

“You asked me to film you!”

Sober Sasha hates Drunk Sasha sometimes. “Well, I take it back! Delete it.”

“All right, all right,” he says, turning the phone so she can see it. She watches as he hits the little red garbage icon, then relaxes. 

“That’s a lot less sexy than you’d think,” she muses. 

Tim grins. “Don’t know,” he replies. “I thought it was pretty sexy.”

She can’t with him sometimes. She suddenly feels, again, exposed in her bare skin in the daylight air. When she looks around, she can’t see where on the floor her blouse and trousers landed. She needs him out of here, to compose herself. “Is there water?” she asks. 

With a belaboured groan, Tim sits up, the sheets falling off him to reveal his muscled back, the golden-brown shine of his thighs, moist with sweat. At the sight, she almost stops wishing the flat was air-conditioned. Christ, he’s beautiful. It’s really not fair. She doesn’t like to make a habit of sleeping with coworkers, especially in her third academic job in as many years, especially when she’s vying for her elderly boss’s position when she inevitably retires from the dusty depths of the Archive. 

As Tim slips from the room and she hears the sound of the tap, she tries to piece together the night before. Tim had bought shots. Tequila, of all things, and even though she hated it on principle, she’d played along, exhausted from another impossibly long week of chasing down witnesses who didn’t want to talk about the statement’s they’d given, apparently willingly, only months before. And what next? She remembers some cheeky comment from Martin about Tim’s hand, which rested close to hers on the scratched oak table of the pub, last call, a sharp jolt of desire when Tim put his hand on the small of her back leading her out onto the wet London streets, clambering into a taxi… 

Tim’s hesitant, “is this okay?” His tongue. Her hands, his hair. The exasperated glances of the cabbie into his rearview mirror, though she can’t expect that kind of display in his backseat is exactly unusual on a Saturday night at two in the morning. Tim’s bed, his firm body atop hers, her fingers around his stiff cock. She stops the memory there, blushing. 

_ I was drunk _ , she tells herself.  _ That’s all, a one-time thing.  _ But she knows she’ll have to tell him that, and dreads it. As much as Tim makes a show of sleeping around, seducing coworkers unscrupulously, she’s not so oblivious as to have missed the way he looks at her when he happens to pop by her office, to have not noticed how he always seems to have just enough extra chips for her when he grabs takeout on late nights. 

She knew, and she fucked him anyway. She groans. She may as well face the consequences. 

“Here you are, Sash,” he says smoothly when he steps back inside. The glass he places in her waiting hand is slick with condensation, the water ice-cold; it jerks her awake and stirs up the boozy sway of nausea that travels from her gut to her throat. She swallows firmly. 

“God, I’ll be sick. Never again,” she teases, “am I letting you buy me a drink.”

“Come on, now,” he pleads lightheartedly. “You had a good time.”

“But was it worth it?” She tosses back the remaining water quickly, then lays flat on her back, trying to avoid meeting Tim’s eye. 

“Wait, wait, did you not… I thought you were having a good time.” Indignantly, he adds, “you certainly sounded like you were having a good time.” 

Though Tim looks almost crestfallen, she can’t stop herself from laughing. “Tim,” she blurts, “I had a good time. That’s the problem, mate.” To his look of confusion, she clarifies: “You know this can’t happen again. Come on.”

He shrugs. “I thought you’d say that,” he admits. “But Sash. Come on. You and me? It might be sort of fun.” 

“Even if you were being serious, and I’m not convinced you are, we work together.” She sighs. “I might be your boss someday. Soon.”

He raises his eyebrows. “Think Gertrude’s just about ready to kick the bucket, eh, Sash?” 

“Don’t be crass. I’m sure Elias would let her  _ retire. _ ” She takes his hand, and it’s hot. She traces the lines of his thumb with her palm. “I like you. You’re… funny, Tim. But I can’t… I don’t hook up with people at work. I’m a woman in academia. I can’t afford to have people finding out about things like… this.” 

TIm scoffs. “You’re the smartest person I know, Sasha. Elias would be an idiot if he let rumours get in the way of promoting you.” 

She knows she’s smart. She’s always known it. She spent Friday evenings in high school learning French and Latin, came top of her class at uni, paid her way through her graduate degree with well-earned scholarships and works harder than anyone else in the Institute. Even so, hearing Tim say it makes her smile. She can hear the earnest note in his voice, knows he really means it. 

“That’s sweet, Tim. But…” 

She hadn’t realized their heads were coming closer and closer together as they spoke, and suddenly she’s interrupted by Tim’s mouth on hers. Against her better judgement, she pulls him in. He tastes stale, of sleep and liquor and toothpaste, and he intoxicates her. She lets her lips open, slides her tongue into his mouth. His hands, his sheets, the sun streaming in through the slatted gaps between the blinds: it’s all hot as she feels herself climb onto his lap. Her breasts press against his chest and she feels him stiffen through his boxers. 

_ You idiot, Sasha,  _ she thinks, as her nails trace over his back and his mouth moves down her throat, sucking at it desperately. 

“This all right?” he whispers throatily. She nods, frantic. Yes, it’s all right. Everything he does is all right. His teeth latch around her nipple and he sucks; she moans for the first time and he pulls her closer, closer. “Mmm. Sasha. You’re lovely.” 

She supposes she can let this count as “a one time thing.” After all, she hasn’t even technically left his bed since the last time. Bolstered by this thought, all hesitation leaves her, and she pushes him down, straddling him, feeling the hot wetness between her thighs grow as she presses against him and his hands clasp at her arse. She hears a low sound, realizes it’s her, and reaches down to palm at his cock over his boxers. 

“Come on,” she whispers, “off with these.”

Even Tim can’t make the harried stripping of pants seem anything but awkward, but once he’s naked again, she climbs on top of him, head hazy with desire. She wants his hands, his mouth, everywhere at once; every inch of her skin is electric in the humid summer morning. She settles herself over him so he could enter her with the slightest movement of his hips, and hovers there, leaning down to kiss his collarbone as his hands pull at her hair. 

“You’re so gorgeous, Sasha, so lovely, really,” he says into her ear, and she traces his neck with her tongue to suckle at his earlobe hungrily. He makes a delightful sound and she smiles. 

“What d’you want?” she whispers. “Come on, Tim. Tell me.” 

He presses against her and she shies away. “Use your words.”

“Sasha, Sasha, you know, you know I want you to fuck me,” he babbles senselessly, “please, please let me be inside you, I want to feel you…” 

She moves herself up to look down at him. His eyes are closed, his hands clasped at her hips, and she slowly, achingly moves her hand to deftly position herself above him before settling down on him. 

She’s thankful for the IUD she’d had put in the year before, because the feel of his bare skin, she soft, wet slide of his cock in and out of her as she moves atop him is  _ wonderful _ . After a minute of her slow rocking, he starts to move his hips in time with her, and the thrusts hit a sweet and lovely spot deep inside her that makes her toss her head back in delight. Her stomach tightens when she feels one of Tim’s hands let her hips go and reach for her clit, running over it with one thumb in rhythm with their fucking. All the scruples she woke up with are gone, and it’s just her and TIm, lovely, sarcastic Tim who plays at skepticism and misses his brother and stays late when she does just to walk her to the Tube and remembered how she takes her coffee after she’d only told him once and ties his hair up in a loose and messy bun when he concentrates and has a dimple only in the left side of his cheek… 

He gasps her name and she comes quickly, all at once, quivering; her thighs fail and she collapses on top of him. Frantically, he turns her over, whispers “fuck” as he enters her again, leans himself over her, and even though she’s spent she savours the feeling of him inside her, something, she realizes only now, she’d wanted for a very long time. 

The look on his face when he comes inside her is priceless, the way his mouth tightens and his eyes squeeze shut and he tips his head back to expose the sweet curve of his throat. He doesn’t pull out right away, but lays on top of her as his cock softens before rolling off to settle beside her. 

After a long silence punctuated only by heavy breathing and the sound of traffic from outside, he quips, “Gotta be honest, Sash. I’m getting some mixed signals from you.” 

When he speaks, she knows he’s gone. And how could she be so stupid? Of course it would be Tim, of course, the one person she felt utterly safe around, the person at the Institute she knew better than anyone, and the person she couldn’t dare get involved with. 

She fixes her mind on her career, on the Archivist’s office she hopes to sit in someday, on herself in ten, twenty years, and steels herself. Even so, her throat tightens as she says, “Tim. Really. I have to go.”

She knows he’s startled as he sits up suddenly, watching her as she climbs off the bed to pull on last night’s outfit and pull her hair up. She can’t risk even using the loo; she can’t be here for another moment. 

“Come on. Sasha, we can at least talk about this. Sasha. I’m sorry, if I… did something wrong or… don’t go.”

He follows her through the hall and to the front door. She can hardly stand to look at him; she knows she must seem cold but can’t allow herself to care. “Tim, really. I have to get home. I’ll see you Monday.” 

Against her best judgement, she lets herself plant a peck on his cheek before she slips out the door, leaving him, undressed, baffled, and not a little hurt, behind her. It’s only when she’s in the hallway that she bites her lip and starts to cry.


End file.
